There was the gilded bronze statue, of course, the golden pistols and a peacock-feather flyswat topped with a gold elephant. But among all the grotesque finery seized by jubilant rebels from Muammar Gaddafi's Bab al-Aziziya compound since his ignominious flight, one item emerged yesterday that may give a more revealing insight into the dictator's thinking than all his bling.

A group of rebels accompanied by an Associated Press photographer found an album full of pictures of the former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. Here she is in a smart black suit and gold necklace, addressing an unidentified gathering, here speaking from a podium, perhaps at the UN. Here consulting with an unnamed world leader or diplomat.

The exact location in which it was found is unclear, but so exuberantly has Gaddafi spoken in the past of his fondness for Rice that it seems likely the album came from his personal collection. "I support my darling black African woman," he told al-Jazeera in 2007.

"I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders … Leezza, Leezza, Leezza … I love her very much. I admire her and I'm proud of her because she's a black woman of African origin."

The Rice album aside, those seeking an insight from the items looted from Gaddafi's compound into the dictator's state of mind may be struck by a faint sense of deja vu. Aside from their megalomania, fondness for brutality and (frequently) ignominious ends, dictators unwaveringly seem to share a taste in possessions and interior decor that might best be described as exuberant.

Saddam Hussein famously gold-plated his taps; he did the same to his lavatory brushes. US soldiers entering his palace in Basra in 2003 found huge Moorish screens carved from teak, enormous columns clad in marble with vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows seemingly everywhere.

Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu demolished much of historic Bucharest to construct a 1,100-room presidential palace of such scale that it is now said to be the world's second largest building; he did not survive to see it completed.

Among the many luxurious residences of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo's president for 32 years until his death in 1997, was a Chinese-style palace at Gbadolite (he also had a "private" and a "presidential" palace in the same town, which earned it the nickname "the Versailles of the jungle") surrounded by 40ft railings topped in gold.

Gaddafi, for his part, erected the requisite statues in his own image, and sported heavy golden necklaces and the braided military cap gleefully looted by a rebel fighter earlier this week. A gold plated tea trolley was found. In the home of his daughter Aisha, now also fled, rebels discovered – in an enormous marble hall at the entry to her palace – a large gold chaise in the shape of a mermaid with Aisha's own face.

"You just have to think what it takes to be a dictator," notes the style commentator Peter York, who, as author of Dictator's Homes, literally wrote the book on the subject of despot decor. "You have fought your way there. Even if you did have capital-G "Good" taste, it wouldn't work with your people, many of whom are not very literate. The point is to impress and intimidate to the max. To say, 'I'm fantastically important and powerful." The home of a dictator is, he notes, "a world entirely without irony".

York has gone so far as to formulate a number of key principles which, he says, invariably inform how a dictator will deck out his humble palace. They include building big – "everything is wildly, fantastically oversized" – installing gold, glass and images of oneself everywhere, and emulating everywhere a particular style of ancien regime French grandeur that is wholly fake. "They like old-style because it looks serious but they don't like actual antiques because they're old."

Key principles include "Ferrero Rocher twinkly" and "testosteronic symbolism" – the eagles, lions, elephants and other aggressive animals dictators like to employ as symbols of the imperial, yet slightly savage, power.

Karen Pine, professor of psychology at the university of Hertfordshire and a specialist in consumerist culture, said Gaddafi's interior design principle – "bigger, better, with more gold on" – has "nothing to do with taste or style"; its only purpose being to reinforce to others, and himself, his elevated position. As she notes, "it can't be very relaxing" living in such a space.

But just as dictators create themselves, very literally, as icons – striving for ubiquity in their image, always expressed in heroic or godlike terms – so is their fall a very literal one, says Pine. "The fallen idol is what we are literally seeing. We talk of 'toppling' dictators, just as we do their golden statues." Gaddafi's image has been stripped from walls and lampposts in Tripoli; soon his finery and golden weapons will have vanished too.

Fierce clashes are reported between rebels and Gaddafi forces in the Abu Salim district in Tripoli, just south of Gaddafi's former compound. There is speculation that Gaddafi – or one or more of his sons – may be holding out in the district